Manchester podcasters could offer the travel inspiration you need for your post-Coronavirus holiday

Manchester podcasters could offer the travel inspiration you need for your post-Coronavirus holiday

With flights across the world cancelled due to COVID-19 many people will be using lockdown to plan their next trip for as soon as the travel ban is lifted.

While the nation continues to work from home awaiting information on how lockdown will be eased over the coming months, they may turn to blogs, vlogs and other forms of social media as they plan their next holiday for when the coronavirus nightmare is over.

Among those who use creative media to encourage and inform aspiring travellers of the many beautiful places on our planet are Matt and Amy Thompson who host ‘What The Pho Travel Podcast’.

The couple recently moved to Manchester after returning from a 14-month trip where they visited 19 countries. However, their podcast dates back to 2015.

Nick said: “We both liked to travel and because of Amy’s job as a radio producer for the BBC and because I drove a lot for my job listening to radio and podcasts we wanted to find a travel podcast we enjoyed but at the time, around five years ago when podcasts weren’t as popular we couldn’t find what we were looking for.

“And because Amy had a bit of industry knowledge, we thought why don’t we make our own podcast?”

“It was just a fun hobby idea we had first, talking about trips we had been on in our annual leave. The long-term travel part came later.

“It was only when the show gained a bit of popularity and people apart from my mum were listening that we thought, about three or four years in, let’s take it on the road. Let’s try and go around the world with this and work with some companies and that’s how it happened.”

Since the podcast started five-years-ago they have achieved over 143,000 downloads and spent eight weeks on the front page of iTunes in the summer of 2017.

Through their work creating travel content for a wider audience, Mr and Mrs Thompson have made friends in the industry who make travel videos for YouTube.

This led to the creation of their channel in 2019, after listeners encouraged them to move their content to the video platform.

Amy Thompson said: “We love being on camera, we love showing people the world and we love challenging people, the whole idea behind our podcast is to learn, explore and challenge.

“The future of our podcast, rather than our traditional episodes where we tell you what you can do and where you can go, we want to start exploring more issues around the world.

“For example, we’re coming out with a podcast about the Amazon rainforest and how the tribes over there are affected by the oil companies and topics like that really - that’s where both the podcast and YouTube channel are going.”

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As well as going through all the stages to create, edit and publish their podcast Mr and Mrs Thompson have set up a business where they offer their podcast management services to others.

Mrs Thompson said: “The idea came about just before we went on the big year trip. I was thinking of ways we could earn a little bit of money that wouldn’t take too much time out of our travelling.

“I knew we would be sat on buses for a long time and I knew it was work we could do online and one of my friends said to look at one of those freelance websites like Freelancer, Fiver or Upwork.

“I went on the latter and one of the women on their really liked our story and said she had a podcast and would we mind editing it for her.

“It didn’t earn us a lot of money, but it’s grown from there through word of mouth and we are now in this massive friendship group of businesswomen who are now giving out our services that way.”

When it comes to the future of their business and travels, Nick and Amy revealed they do plan to reunite with their backpacks and travel the world again.

Mr Thompson said: “We are self-employed, this is our main job, our main income and we can do it online, we can do it anywhere so actually we do want to travel again long term but a lot slower this time.

“With the business, we can travel but we can also earn money at the same time and we would stay in a city for a month or two, get to know the place, work, earn some money while we’re there, do it all online and when we’re ready to move onto the next place so we will be travelling a lot slower.